From nellardo@concentric.net Tue May 02 09:37:01 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1814 invoked from network); 2 May 2000 16:37:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 2 May 2000 16:37:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO qg.egroups.com) (10.1.2.27) by mta1 with SMTP; 2 May 2000 16:37:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 23324 invoked from network); 2 May 2000 16:37:00 -0000 Received: from darius.concentric.net (207.155.198.79) by qg.egroups.com with SMTP; 2 May 2000 16:37:00 -0000 Received: from mcfeely.concentric.net (mcfeely.concentric.net [207.155.198.83]) by darius.concentric.net (8.9.1a/(98/12/15 5.12)) id MAA27799; Tue, 2 May 2000 12:36:57 -0400 (EDT) [1-800-745-2747 The Concentric Network] Errors-To: Received: from concentric.net ([216.112.226.144]) by mcfeely.concentric.net (8.9.1a) id MAA21622; Tue, 2 May 2000 12:36:56 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <390EF5D7.5E9BDDBC@concentric.net> Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 11:39:27 -0400 Reply-To: nellardo@concentric.net Organization: Herds of Wild Buffalo Girls X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Cc: Daniel Gudlat , lojbab@lojban.org Subject: Re: [lojban] slashdot.org gives Lojban a push References: <4.2.2.20000501214024.00b28100@127.0.0.1> <04a901bfb422$c492b560$22191bc1@rus.ger.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Brook Conner la daniel. cucku di'e > la lojbab. cusku di'e > > > I just found out that Lojban was merely mentioned in a topic of > discussion > > on slashdot.org a few days ago. The result has been a phenomonal set [...] > That's known as the "slashdot effect". Well, more correctly, the > slashdot effect pertains to the downing of web servers that are well > suited to the load normally imposed on them, when those servers get hit > by a million geeks in one day after the site was mentioned in a slash > dot front article. This *was* a front article - lojban.org is lucky it didn't die. Had the story been more "newsy" than the "Ask Slashdot" one about a "common Internet language", then we probably would have gotten a lot more hits. As it was, most of the discussion was along the lines of the usual naysayers on auxlang and such - no artificial language will become a worldwide standard, because it's too hard to replace the one that is already there (English, usually). Now, if I ever get around to that programatic semantics for lojban and it produces something truly interesting and useful (or at least amusing - e.g., using Doom or Quake as a sysadmin tool gets a lot of attention on /.), then /. would really pay attention. Hmmm, now here's a thought - Lojban as a speakable replacement for Perl..... For sure you can't speak Perl - too much punctuation. Stuff like $_ =~ s/\//::/g is legitimate perl - roughly this means "Replace every / with a :: in the most recently relevant string." This is something that could quite certainly be said in lojban exactly. Gonna have to think on this one and post some more details later. [...] > > Oh, kinda interesting is that the hits on the 29th came from 63 > different > > country domains, including such places as Christmas Island and Niue. > > Hmm, we may finally get a truly international audience on the list. This > may prove interesting. Three cheers to slashdot if it really happens! Yeah - /. is a global audience, though (not surprisingly) skewed to North America, and can bring down sites anywhere in the world. One recent mainstream article (Forbes?) mentioned a site in South Africa that got slashdotted. The sysadmins went on about how all of a sudden (to the minute of the story appearing on /.) they had thousands of crazy penguins streaming across the Atlantic, and they had a couple of months worth of hits in a few hours. > > I am not sure I ever heard of slashdot.org before this. But > > obviously a lot of people read it seriously. > > You betcha. It's THE geek site on the internet. And your comment above > disproves the alleged geekiness of lojban: How can lojban be a geek > language when the head of the LLG doesn't even know about /. ? Hahahaha! Yep - kind of like my favorite "geek test" - one "question", and if you laugh, you're a geek: "You see a Volkswagon Beetle with a license plate that reads 'FEATURE'" Brook